


December 2

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: December Fic Prompts [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Melancholy, Mervus loves the snow, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: Keith, it turns out, has some baggage associated with Earth holidays.
Relationships: Keith (Voltron) & Original Child Character(s)
Series: December Fic Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037385
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	December 2

**Author's Note:**

> Look who's back! Mervus comes from [this story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925589), and while reading that isn't completely necessary to understanding this one, it's helpful. I swear Mervus and Keith are getting their own fully-fledged, multi-chapter fic once I just...sit down and finish writing it, but for now please enjoy this snippet.

It was that time of year again. The time when the little Earth-synced calendar on the dashboard helpfully informed him it was getting to be late December and Keith had panicky, almost guilty feelings about not going back to Earth to celebrate Christmas. He’d had sort of a rocky relationship with holidays to begin with, and leaving Earth and fighting in a war really hadn’t improved things. Krolia always tried to convince him that he didn’t need to celebrate Earth holidays, or Galra holidays, or _any_ holidays if he didn’t want, but he always felt a bit like he was betraying some sacred part of his heritage when he did that.

So, time to distract himself.

“Were there any holidays on Evae, Mervus?” he asked over dinner, only to get a confused head tilt in response. Keith wasn’t sure why he was surprised. They’d already established that the Evalüir had no concept of birthdays. Mervus knew in general terms how old she was, but pinning it down to a specific date was impossible. She hadn’t seemed terribly enthused with the idea, but that was fine. If she changed her mind later, they could always come up with some kind of an honorary day.

But the lack of holidays still felt…off. Like even a civilization as rigid as the Evalüir would still find reason to mark a new year, or pick a day in the cold season to gather together and eat. He supposed it didn’t matter in the end, but now he had to somehow explain the notion of ‘celebrating’ to someone who had no prior experience with it.

“A holiday is…it’s where you get together with people you like, and you sort of…mark a specific occasion. Sometimes it’s mostly for fun, like dressing up in costumes and asking people to give you candy, or sometimes it’s sad, like mourning the death of an important figure. Sometimes it’s just to mark a specific day. There wasn’t anything like that?”

Mervus shook her head. “There were days when the Council would meet to make new laws, but nothing like that. It sounds…interesting.”

_Interesting_ , Keith had learned, was Mervus-code-speak for “I would like to do this thing but don’t really know how to ask for it without seeming too invested.”

“There’s a big Earth holiday coming up. You give people gifts, eat food, put a bunch of decorations on a tree. In places where it gets cold, a lot of times there were things to do out in the snow, too. Ice skating, snowball fights, that kind of thing. Have you seen snow before?” Evae, or at least most of it, was a warm jungle climate, but he was still picking apart at Mervus’s time with Treptor.

"No, but I've heard of it. We could go,” Mervus said. “To Earth.”

“Um, sure,” Keith tried, thinking about how the last time he’d been on Earth for Christmas he’d been miserable and alone, barring the few awkward moments he’d accidentally run into Pidge and Matt at the Garrison on his way out. He could suck it up, though, if Mervus wanted to see snow on Keith’s home planet.

Except Mervus was giving him a rather unimpressed glare from across the table. Right. Empath. He was still getting used to that.

“Even if I haven’t seen them, I know there are lots of planets with snow. We can go somewhere else,” she said.

Keith got the feeling, every once in a while, that Mervus was secretly the adult in this relationship. Still, he wasn’t about to argue with her.

“I know a few places we could try.”

* * *

He chose Sothade. The snow wasn’t quite like it was on earth; the flakes were larger and tinted light blue and lilac and silver. But it snowed constantly in certain regions of the planet, and he’d once brokered peace between two tribes that had been feuding for the past two thousand years. The Sothadie had insisted he could come back any time he wanted.

They were certainly just as happy to see him when the Denebola docked as they had been during the celebratory peace treaty dinner. The Sothadie set them up in a cozy wooden cabin that looked like it could have come off a Hallmark tcard, thrust a bundle of food and drinks and firewood into Keith’s arms, cooed over Kosmo and Mervus, and informed Keith that he was to call if they needed anything at all.

He knew Mervus was itching to get outside and explore, rocking back and forth on her heels behind him, but an actual kitchen was a resource Keith wasn’t going to pass up. Besides, he had a feeling Mervus would appreciate hot soup and warm apple cider after experiencing real cold for the first time. It took a while - he was still used to dealing with the _Denebola's_ excuse for a kitchen, so all the options were a bit of a novelty - but he was pretty sure he'd come up with something decent. He was about to start on a batch of muffins when Kosmo whined and nudged his arm. Keith turned to see Mervus, face pressed against the windows, her tail swishly lightly from side to side.

Yeah, ok. They could live without the muffins.

“What do you think, Mervus?”

“Snow,” she said reverently, and Keith supposed some things were universal.

“Yeah,” he said as he got her bundled into the special heated coat he’d gotten her just for such an occasion. “What do you want to do first?”

Mervus considered for a while, but finally settled on, “Snowman.”

“Good choice,” Keith smiled. It was another reason for choosing Sothade. The snow here always seemed to be the perfect consistency for packing, and while Keith highly doubted Mervus would be interested in a snowball fight, it was still good for the snowmen and snowangels and snow-whatever else she could come up with.

They didn’t have a carrot, though, or materials for the eyes and mouth, so while the end result was almost perfectly shaped, the face left something to be desired. They’d only managed to find two pebbles for the eyes but hey, it was the thought that counts.

Keith, having mostly grown up in the middle of a desert, migrated back onto the porch after that with a thermos of hot cider and watched fondly from the rocking chair that seemed to be outside for this very reason. Mervus continued her exploration of snow, playing some kind of game with Kosmo that mostly seemed to consist of jumping headfirst into the largest snowbanks they could find.

Eventually, though, Mervus started to slow down. Chroptka had warned him to make sure Mervus didn’t get too chilled, so he coerced her back inside with the promise that they were here for several days and she could go back into the snow tomorrow. Suitably mollified, she wrapped herself up in the fluffy fleece blanket she’d claimed as hers and sat with Kosmo on the couch, staring longingly back at the setting sun reflecting off the snow-covered ground. It was just a spare blanket he’d kept in the cockpit for those nights he’d had to take a quick nap while the ship was on autopilot (or, more often, those nights when he just couldn’t be bothered to go to bed). But Mervus had latched on it after that disastrous trip to Evae as if it were a lifeline. Keith hadn’t been spending too many nights in the cockpit anymore, so it all worked out.

“You like the snow, I take it?” Keith smiled as he checked on the soup.

“I wish we could do this every year,” she said wistfully. Kosmo seemed to huff an agreement from where he’d shoved himself into the too-small space in between Mervus and the armrest of the couth.

“We can, you know,” Keith said. “That’s part of the holidays, too. Making new traditions with people.”

“Okay,” Mervus answered, as if dealing with all the baggage Keith had associated with Earth holidays could be as simple as just rejecting the old, painful memories and creating new ones. New ones involving glistening snow on alien planets with his giant cosmic wolf and the empath kid he’d adopted.

But maybe it really was as simple as that.


End file.
